If you don’t get stuck in one of Prague’s lovely cathedrals or wonderful exhibitions, there are some great places to pick up some crafty supplies. One of these is the immensely practical haberdashery Filium in the Palladium shopping centre. Apparently they boast the widest assortment of fashion buttons in the Czech Republic and, while they might not quite beat the legendary Duttons for Buttons in York, it is a seriously impressive collection.

The store is located on the bottom floor (level -2 – the layout of the centre is somewhat confusing) and boasts some ridiculous opening hours of 9 – 9 most days and 9 – 10 pm on the rest! The store is a general haberdashery with yarns, fabrics and an entire collection of Gutterman threads. However, despite it being a general store which sometimes means functional but a bit dull big-name brands, Filium has some very nice and more unusual pieces as well.

First of all is the delightful button collection, pleasing ordered by colour codes with everything from the plain and sturdy to the cute and unusual. There’s also a fantastic trimmings collection and some good patches. I like their small embellishments collection, like small ribbon flowers and nice lace pieces – I don’t know whether these are made in store but there’s enough wonderful odds and ends that they feel like special one off pieces.

For a non-yarn specialist, the yarn collection is amazingly diverse and some of the multicoloured skeins did nearly get rescued by me. It is mostly big brands but it’s a great range of everything to chunky arans to lighter laceweight cottons and there’s enough mixed colour pieces in there to liven up your knitting. Maybe with one of their very nice needle collection kits for all your fancy needle needs.

It’s a really nicely laid out store and deceptively big from the shop front. It extends quite far back from the yarns at the front of the shop to the buttons and fabric cutting area at the back. Fabrics are mostly quilting cottons in fresh, modern prints but again, it’s a reasonably diverse selection from a store that is trying to be the ‘shop of all trades’.

Being part-magpie the bead collection did catch my eye and they sell the great holed bead and sequin collections that are a great value way of getting a range of shiny bits and pieces for doing small embellishment work. I appreciate some of the Japanese beads are very different in terms of the quality control demands but it would be great to see bigger and more varied collections of these as well. I feel there’s a real hole in the market for bigger packs lots of bead types to keep you sparkling.

The ribbon collection is gorgeous and I did buy a few bundles of the shiny glittery stuff in a range of colours. I think this is a shop with a cleverly designed layout to make everything look as appealing as possible because I think I wanted to bring home most of these shelves. The displays make the place worth a visit alone!

Overall, a really lovely and surprising haberdashery. Plenty of notions, fabrics, odds and ends and lots of creative embellishments to get you excited about crafting all over again.